Monsters Unite
by RozzandMaya
Summary: What do Erik, Dracula, Quasimodo, Hyde, Captain Hook, Darth Maul, Frankenstein, and Professor Moriarty have in common? Bowling nite? Read on to find out. Rating because characters are all...villains.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: why do we do this over and over? Erik is in public domain. alas, I'm sure a lot of the others arent...so I disclaim!

* * *

Erik, the famed, the feared, the doomed Phantom of the Opera was reading the paper in his favorite armchair. He had a little trouble reading the big words, but he was really working on that (along with his penmanship) and he was improving. Not drastically, but improving. On another note, he still had trouble with base ten, but that was indeed a difficult concept, and there wasn't much in Italian operas about it. German operas had tons of stuff about base ten, but Erik didn't speak German so it didn't matter much. It didn't make much difference, but it would have helped to be able to calculate the mathematical probability that Lance Armstrong would once again win the Tour de France. Erik had asked Santa for a TV this year so that he could watch the Tour de France, but Santa wrote him a nice letter back explaining that the reception would be terrible underneath the Opera House, and Erik wasn't supposed to know that electricity had been invented anyways. So tragically, for everything in Erik's life ended tragically, Erik had been left to follow the Tour de France using only newspapers and seismographs, which he had his minion, a fellow named Darius who had been given to him by a woman named Susan Kay, plant strategically along the racing route. If the sentences were choppy, the ideas slightly disjointed, it was Sue's fault, because she had gotten Erik hooked on heroin too.

Erik turned the page and sighed.

There was a knock on the door.

Erik sighed again, "Go away Meg."

"Psssst!"

Erik put the paper down, unclenched his fists from the thrill of it all, and got up. "Meg, you know what your mom has told you. I'll get you with my magical lasso." Right about now, Meg usually giggled, but the door was silent. "Come on Meg, you know I'm good with that lasso," Erik said. "I got third place in the Pro Rodeo Goat Tying Competition last fall."

Erik stood frowning at the door. No giggling Meg. Maybe it was someone from the ballet who had baked him brownies.

"Pssst!" the door said again.

Erik jumped, remembered that you were supposed to open doors when someone knocked, and….opened the door.

At first Erik thought he was looking at a floating head, but then he realized that it was just an abnormally pale person dressed in a black cape that happened to be lined with red satin.

Erik hitched up his pants and hoped he looked reasonably fashionable today. "Who are you?"  
The pale man seemed to have been waiting for this. "I am…Dracula." He said in a very stentorian, manly testosterone-filled-but-not-quite-Clint-Eastwood voice.

Erik waited.

"Who are you?" Dracula said, by way of conversation.

"Erik the Phantom of the Opera."

"That would explain the mask." Dracula said, giving a jolly impression of Santa Claus.

They laughed together for a second.

Then they waited some more.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" Dracula asked halfheartedly.

Erik thought about it. "Why?"

"Well I was hoping that we could discuss it over tea." Dracula shrugged his shoulders.

"But don't vampires do vampire things to people who invite them in?"

Dracula pinched his lips down to try to hide his fangs. "Sometimes."

Erik scratched his chin. "I'm suicidal anyways. Why don't you come in?"

Dracula didn't move.

Erik waited.

"You have to say 'Please do come in.'" Dracula explained, "Or it doesn't work. Rhetorical questions don't count."

"Is a rhetorical question grammar?" Erik pondered this.

Dracula shrugged again.

"If I let you in, could you teach me grammar?" Erik asked.

Dracula nodded for a while, and then shook his head.

Erik let out a pathetic, tragic sob. "Please do come in anyways."

Dracula grinned and ducked inside the door. He was very tall in Erik's little living room. Erik himself was generally considered very tall, but Dracula must have had something wrong with his pituitary gland, because he made Erik look like Napoleon. Erik wouldn't have minded being Napoleon, even with all the difficulty getting into chairs, and the Empress, because Napoleon invented a very famous strawberry dessert.

Dracula sat down in Erik's second-favorite armchair.

Erik went to the kitchen to make tea. He did not get the double entendre in the third preceding paragraph because he didn't know what a paragraph was.

"I never drink…wine." Dracula said by way of explanation.

Erik didn't think that this was a necessary comment to make, and that it didn't explain anything really, but he made the tea anyways. He even got out his best Westwood Rose pattern tea set.

Eventually he sat down and handed Dracula his teacup.

"Milk? Sugar?" he asked.

Dracula waved them both aside and proceeded to not drink his tea. Erik found this very insulting.

"Mr. Erik." Dracula began, with a practiced teacup-drinking flourish that didn't actually put any tea into his mouth. "I came to see you about a very grave matter. By the way, I must have this recipe."

Erik slurped his tea just to prove to Dracula that _he_ was drinking it and that it tasted very good, as teas go.

Dracula set his teacup down, "I've been watching TV lately—"

"Well I haven't." Erik complained.

"—And I have noticed that I'm murdered in every single movie I've ever been in."

"It's all Santa's fault." Erik grumbled and wiped some tea off of his mustache. It wasn't a mustache yet, but Erik had been trying for months now, and it deserved to be called a mustache.

Dracula raised an eyebrow. "Well, to make a long story short, I've also noticed that your life ends tragically in all of your movies. And I have a list," He reached into his pants pocket, "Of a bunch of other guys who Hollywood really has it in for. I was thinking that we should start some kind of support network, emotional bolstering, that kind of stuff."

Erik shook his head. "I'm a loner."

"How about a round robin?"

"I poke myself with needles on purpose. I'm a cutter. I'd bleed to death." Erik knew exactly what a round robin was, even though most everyone else in the world under the age of forty was completely clueless. Suffice to say that it was an exceedingly dangerous venture that only those with endurance, fortitude, and thimbles would embark on.

"Well." Dracula stared glumly at his list. "That only leaves the last idea I had. We could barricade ourselves in a fortress, design a super-weapon, kill everyone, and take over the world. Then we could have reunions and stuff to congratulate ourselves."

Erik looked into his tea for inspiration. People actually did this, Erik knew. He'd been in the circus, and the navy. "Ok, sure."

Dracula clapped his hands together. "Oh good. I was hoping that someone would be my friend."

"Ok."

"Well let's go get the others then." Dracula suggested.

"Who are they?"

"Oh all kinds of people." Dracula grabbed Erik's hand in both his own and shook it like a grandmother. Because Dracula would be the type of person to shake your grandmother. "From great books of all times, faraway lands, and mostly London."

"Will we have to time travel?" Erik asked.

"No, most of them are alive right now, and the ones from the future already know how to time travel. A couple are immortal like me."

Erik pulled his hand away and shook the nasty grandmother-ness off of it.

"Don't worry, I have the next meeting all set up." Dracula stood and impressively wrapped his cape around him. Just as impressively he turned himself into a half-pound squeaky mammal that was blind and shaped like a dinner roll.

Erik felt the sudden urge to follow Dracula, and as his brain was putting it, 'vocalize strangely.' Erik began 'vocalizing strangely' and Dracula didn't mind because it was mostly out of his hearing, but when Erik got to the higher notes, Dracula pooped on his head to make him cut it out. Erik reasoned that this was because bats couldn't talk.

They journeyed on in silence until they came to a dark and stormy night.


	2. Chapter 2

P.S. A round robin is a club where a bunch of people get together and quilt, they pass the pieces on to the next person after they've done something and that person continues the quilt however they want. It takes months. It takes patience. It takes clean fingers. Dracula would kill it. Erik would blow it up. Quasimodo would love it.

* * *

"I see that it is a dark and stormy night." Dracula cackled to the wind.

Erik tried to laugh maniacally, but didn't do it quite as well as Dracula did. Never worry, Erik would practice.

They had arrived outside a pub three subway stops and one block away from the Opera House. Sleet was driving at the cobblestones. Inside the pub a large group of hairy unwashed Frenchmen were shouting 'merde' at a TV displaying the latest scores from the Tour de France.

Erik and Dracula made their way through the comrades and up to the counter.

"The bellringer?" Dracula asked the bartender.

The bartender reached for his dusty bottle of tequila, but Dracula stopped him.

"No, the bell ringer from Notre Dame."

The bartender twirled his dreadlocks and pretended not to speak English until Dracula gave him a two euro piece as a bribe.

"He's outside in the sidewalk café."

Dracula nodded, slapped the man with his glove, and started out to the sidewalk café.

The sidewalk café was not situated in a dark and stormy night, Erik noticed. In fact it was situated in a crisp spring sunrise. The white metal tables and chairs had picked up an orange glow from the sun and birds were chirping. Dracula did not seem surprised by any of this.

Erik decided that he needed to quit drugs.

Dracula wove his way through several groups of touring American girls who were giggling over the price of water and the general smell of the men here. When she saw Dracula, one of the girls bowed respectfully from her chair, and all of the other ones immediately started poking her with their forks. Erik didn't see why Dracula should get the royal treatment and not _him._ The episode didn't make much sense anyway, and it did nothing to further the plot, so he ignored the gasps and giggles and flung himself into the chair that Dracula was holding for him.

Across the table was something like a green potato.

Dracula sat down. "HELLO!" he shouted.

The green potato didn't look up until Dracula shook him by the shoulder.

"HELLO!" Dracula repeated.

"Yes it is, isn't it." was the reply.

"ARE YOU QUASIMODO OF THE NOTRE DAME?"

Quasimodo scratched himself for a while, "I'm not sure, I haven't been in this quarter for a while. I think you take a left on the Rue Marineau."

Erik leaned a little to the side and saw that Quasimodo was reading a book entitled, "Lip-Reading for the Profoundly Deaf." Erik reached for a napkin and pulled a gel pen out of his pocket protector.

"LOVELY DAY TODAY." Dracula said.

"Nice to meet you, they call me Quasimodo, after Quasimodo Sunday." Quasimodo hauled an enormous hand up from under the table and shook Dracula's hand carefully, holding it between his thumb and forefinger.

"EAT YOUR SPINACH, DO YOU?" Dracula commented, massaging his hand.

"Sorry, Dracula, I thought vampires were supposed to have preternatural strength." Quasimodo grinned with all three of his teeth.

Erik didn't know what preternatural meant. He pushed his napkin forward.

It read: "Would you like to join me and Drac and some other guys in taking over the world and causing pain and suffering? "

Quasimodo read the napkin and looked up at Dracula. "Ok. But shouldn't we unionize?"

Dracula shrugged.

Quasimodo looked excited. "We could call ourselves the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

"It's been done." Erik pointed out. Quasimodo didn't hear him, of course. "The box office was pathetic."

Dracula scribbled on the napkin. "How about we don't think of a name until everyone's joined?"

Quasimodo's shoulders slumped. "Ok."

"Now you go back to the Notre Dame," Dracula wrote, "Try to rent us one of the conference rooms. Erik and I will go and collect the next member." He finished the sentence with a vampire-like flourish of his pen.

Quasimodo took a second to read it. "I could terrorize the tourists out of the choirbox for a few hours."

Dracula clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man."

Quasimodo got up and waddled off mumbling. Erik caught the word 'barricade' but nothing else. He turned back to Dracula. "Well who's next?"

"Shhh." Dracula was squinting up his eyes. "I'm trying to think of a wonderful thought."

Erik made an undignified snorting noise. "A wonderful thought?"

"Any happy little thought." Dracula said.

"Like what?"

"I'm focusing on high school chemistry, if you must know."

"Oh."

"Because it makes me happy."

"Right." Erik watched for a while. "If you want to fly, why don't you just turn into a bat again?"

Dracula opened his eyes. "Ha! Silly little me." He made a grandiose gesture and stopped halfway through. "But you still have to think of wonderful thoughts because I can't carry you if I'm a bat." He started laughing and it trailed off into a kind of flap-flap-squeak as he turned into a bat.

Erik tried to think of a wonderful thought. Barrels of gunpowder lining a room, up to the ceiling even! Oh this was getting exciting. And right in the middle of Faust that idiot play that he hated and the music ran through his head like DA dada a dDajdad a. NO NO Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts! OK. In the middle of Faust right where that idiot Marguerite gets up and sings the Jewel Song, KABLOOIE! Erik laughed quite a maniacal laugh, tumbling head over heels.

Which meant that it had worked, funny how it had never worked before, and he was flying. Erik figured that he'd better follow Dracula before he got hopelessly lost, Drac was already a tiny little black speck against the night sky.

Which was not dark and stormy, but very calm and twinkly.


	3. Chapter 3

sorry, some language, be warned...

* * *

Erik thought comfortingly of barrels of gunpowder the whole way through an annoying sequel-esque kaleidoscope and into, well, some place that completely defied the laws of physics. Sorta like his house. Erik felt very at home here. Accepted, loved. It must have been one of those general psychologists that Christine had so often talked about. Erik felt loved.

That is until a cannonball went shooting through the air at him. Erik reached for his lasso and started swinging it around above his head until he realized that the rope wasn't big enough to lasso the pirate ship and there was nothing that he could string it up by to strangle it. And pirate ships didn't breathe, he reminded himself, silly silly.

At the first sign of danger, Dracula morphed back into his human self. He began to plummet like a falling vampire.

If you haven't seen one, the simile is quite effective, so no complaints, and shut up.

Erik flapped his way out of the range of the cannonballs, and heard a splash down below.

There was great cheering on the deck of the pirate ship.

"Come down ye swag!" a tremendous pair of lungs bellowed up from a reddish plume on deck.

Erik tried to get a closer look, but the feather shot at him with a brace of pistols or something.

"Blast and Bellows! Odds Fish! Shiver me timbers! Arrr."

Erik hid behind some clouds.

"Hell and damnation!"

"Wait wait!"

"A Pox on Thee!"

"No wait, Mr. Hook, I'd like to talk to you."

There was a pistol shot, Erik flinched.

"OW!" hollered Dracula. Erik heard another splash followed by scraping scrambling climbing noises.

"By the Beard! Swash and Blood!"

"May the curse of my little brother be upon you!" Dracula said, for all the history buffs. Several cringed, but most people just kept reading and ignored the fact of Dracula's little brother and his lasting effects on current British Royalty. Gunshots rang out.

"Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! EEEEEEE!!"

The 'eeeeee' did not appear to be some kind of oriental curse, but rather something akin to extreme electronic terror. Erik peeked over the edge of his cloud.

A slightly anorexic looking pirate (possibly corseted?) was bending over a small short range television set with a smoking pistol clutched in one hand and a pair of rabbit ears snagged in his hook. "Damn it all to hell!" He said, shaking the rabbit ears and firing another couple of bullets into the set. "Lance Armstrong won the Tour De France!"

Dracula wobbled up to Captain Hook picking the seaweed off of his cape. "What, again?"

"Scurvy knave!"

"Erik you coward, get down here. I see you up in those clouds." Dracula growled.

Erik's happy thoughts went fluttering away and he ignominiously went crashing through the sails and ropes and landed on the deck of the pirate ship.

An improbably fat man bent over him and giggled. "Captain!" He jumped up and down and clapped his feet like a seal.

Erik turned his head sideways and watched the man. His nose jiggled, and when it did, it made an obscure rubbery noise. The names 'Frank and Ollie' became stuck in Erik's head, along with the song 'It Appears To Be A Miniscule Earth Even So' or something. It was too much to take, so Erik got up, fluffed his cravat, and strangled the fat man single handedly. The man appeared to be giggling disturbingly through the whole ordeal.

When Erik looked up and brushed his hands up he saw that everyone was looking at him with varying expressions on their face. The man with the feather smiled and fired his pistol into the corpse.

"Odds fish!" he said gaily. "To what do we owe the honor?"

Dracula slicked his hair back. "Would you like to take over the world with us?"

"How do we split the treasure?"

"Oh, you can have it all." Dracula said magnanimously, a little too magnanimously for Erik's taste. "I just want all the maidens in the world."

Captain Hook, being a Mouse© character and a pirate, had no clue what Dracula was talking about and readily agreed to the deal. Erik wanted all of the maidens in the world too, but he was too embarrassed to say so and he just stood glowering as the pirate ship hoisted into the air turned on its afterburners and flung itself into hyperspace in a spray of Caribbean blue.

Unfortunately, the fat man that Erik had murdered was also the navigator, as improbable as it seemed, and Captain Hook's right hand man so in no time at all, they were hopelessly lost.

"Have you seen that planet before?" Dracula asked, pointing at a large glittering shiny thing that looked very expensive to animate. A lens flare accented the planet's futuristic beauty in a pointless but determined manner.

Captain Hook was busy looking through an antiquated spyglass and adjusting it with his hook.

Erik had become bored and was biting his fingernails. He had wondered about the properties of space and why they could breathe the air in a pirate ship, and their method of propulsion, and the sparklyness around them in general, before he decided that as a Parisian from the Victorian era, he just would suspend disbelief for a while. He'd never studied astronomy anyways. Why should any of this surprise him?

"Watch out!" Dracula yelled and hauled hard to port on the boat's steering thing.

A box that looked like a cross between a lead basketball and a tortilla chip cut in front of them. The driver honked and stuck a finger out of the window.

Captain Hook huffed his shoulders, signaled to his crew and unleashed a broadside on him. The box made a wailing electronic noise and began to plummet down.

Erik did not want to ponder which way was down. It was down. That was it. None of this gravitational field business. He'd never even heard of gravitational fields, the words were popping into his head unbidden. Noise in space. Erik didn't want to go there.

"Look alive you swabs! Heave ho to port and make for yon invitin' harbor." Captain Hook said in fluent Japanese.

Dracula waited for a translation.

Erik had a manic fit, jumped to his feet, seized the wheel and steered them through a great deal of rush hour traffic to land in the middle of a godforsaken desert planet with two smeary suns and a surface temperature that rivaled Death Valley. In fact, it bore a striking resemblance to Needles California.

Captain Hook scanned the one street town and slammed his spyglass shut with gusto. "Port in a storm Matees!"

They left the crew on board the pirate ship, and with Dracula in the fearless lead, Captain Hook second, and Erik scuffing his dress shoes in the rear, headed off for the Little A-Le-Inn Motel and Bar.

On the way there, they met a British Knight of the Order of the Garter and a whiny dork. Captain Hook killed them both with a blast from his pistol. Music swelled in the distance.

Quasimodo was coincidentally sitting at a wrought iron table outside of the Bar, sipping a Merlot and eating a loaf of French bread. They decided not to disturb him.


End file.
